Three days before his 50th birthday, Jack Kenneth Plemons was sentenced to start serving 38 years in prison for a variety of charges connected with the sale of methamphetamine.  

Plemons will have to serve a minimum of 13 years before he becomes eligible for early release. Plemons was up on 21 criminal counts.  

He took a plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in many of the charges being dismissed. If he had gone to trial and been convicted on all the counts, he faced a minimum sentence of 122 years in prison and a maximum of 448 years. He could have also been fined up to $1.4 million.  

From July 2019 through September 2021, Plemons was arrested nine times on drug charges in Bedford County.  

He was arrested five times in 2021. Each time he was arrested on felony drug charges he was able to make bail and was released.  

“It’s frustrating for us when you arrest somebody on those charges they make bond and then a short time later they get arrested on similar charges and they’re allowed to continue making bond,” said Assistant DA Mike Randles.  

“In circuit court, we oftentimes file a motion to revoke their bond. Sometimes the judge will grant that motion; sometimes they don’t.”  

In his first Bedford County methamphetamine arrest, July 25, 2019, investigators say Plemons’ 4-year-old daughter was staying in the bedroom with Plemons and his girlfriend at his girlfriend’s home on Hendon Memorial Road.  

On Jan. 28, 2020, when Plemons was arrested, he told investigators he had been purchasing a half pound of methamphetamine every week for the last three months to sell.  

According to Addiction Center, a drug treatment referral agency, the street price of methamphetamine varies widely usually between $20 and $60 a gram.  

At $40 per gram, the street value of the methamphetamine that Plemons was selling would have been nearly $9,000 per week. Plemons did not stop trying to distribute methamphetamine even while in jail in Bedford County.  

In February of 2021, reports show that Cleon Van Stone smuggled methamphetamine into the jail. Van Stone and Plemons were in the same pod in the jail.  

Plemons called associates outside of the jail asking them to pick up Van Stone when he was released. Plemons asked his associates to assist Van Stone in selling methamphetamine.  

Plemons was previously convicted—three times— on Methamphetamine charges in other Tennessee counties: Blount County in 2010 and Monroe County and Anderson County in 2009.  

As a convicted felon, Plemons was prohibited from possessing a firearm but that prohibition did not deter him. He was arrested twice in Bedford County (July and August of 2019) for felon in possession of a firearm.  

In both cases, Plemons had a Taurus Judge, a handgun that combines a .410 shotgun and a .45 caliber pistol. After having a Taurus Judge confiscated in July of 2019, he retrieved the same weapon from his father’s home less than a month later.  

The other firearms he was caught with were a .45 caliber pistol and a .410 shotgun. Plemons’ wife, Mary Elizabeth Plemons, 42, pled guilty in January to a charge of possession of methamphetamine for resale and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.  

She will be eligible for early release on parole after serving 35 percent of the sentence — 4 years and 2 months.  

An additional charge of delivery of meth was dismissed. She had already served nearly 10 months of the sentence in jail awaiting trial.